


Statement #0140905: Ingrown

by BialystockAndBloom



Series: Peccate et Sapienter [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Fan Statement, Gen, Gore, Gross, Martin (Mentioned) - Freeform, Original Male Character(s) - Freeform, Sasha (mentioned), Self-Mutilation, Statement Fic, Tim (Mentioned) - Freeform, foot injury, foot trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22221295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BialystockAndBloom/pseuds/BialystockAndBloom
Summary: Statement of Erastus Constantinou, regarding an ingrown toenail.
Series: Peccate et Sapienter [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588075
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Statement #0140905: Ingrown

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, just a heads up, if the tags didn't give it away, this one has some pretty gnarly stuff about feet in it. Maybe skip this one if you have a weak stomach.

Statement of Erastus Constantinou, regarding an ingrown toenail. Statement originally given September 5, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

~~~

Do you know what paronychia is?

First, it might help to understand where the word comes from. It’s of Greek origin, like so many other medical terms. It comes from the Greek roots “para”, meaning “around”; “onyx”, meaning nail; and the suffix “-ia”, which is often used to denote a condition in a certain part of the body. Just taking into account the first two components, you get “ _paronychium_ ”, which is the anatomical term for the soft tissue _around_ the _nails_. If you’ve ever had a hangnail, it’s because you sustained an injury on that finger’s paronychium.

So, therefore, paronychia is a disease of the paronychium – usually a bacterial infection or inflammation. The affected digit becomes red, sore, and swollen. If it goes long enough untreated, it becomes purulent, with pus oozing out where the nail meets the flesh.

Having paronychia goes hand in with having onychocryptosis – “the disease of the nail hidden” – more commonly called an ingrown nail. What’s interesting is either one can cause the other. If you have an ingrown nail, the resulting wound opens the door to the paronychium getting infected. If the paronychium is infected, it swells up, and the nail grows into it easier.

In my case, I think the ingrown nail came first.

I should give a bit of background. This all happened in 2012. I was 23 at the time, and I’d just gotten a position as a lab tech assistant at King’s College. It was a nice job, all things considered. I worked in the anatomy theater. Whenever there was a lab, I’d show up, prep the bodies, distribute the surgical tools, stick around to make sure nobody poked their eyes out or carved dicks onto the cadavers, then clean up at the end of the day. The pay was decent enough, the students were usually well behaved, and the professor – Dr. McGregor, it would’ve been – was always cordial enough.

I’ve never really had a problem with dead bodies. Not really. When I told people about my job, they always assumed that that was the most gruesome part. Honestly, the only part that really bothered me was moving them on and off of the tables, and that was only because it tended to hurt my back.

Which is why, in the spring of 2012, I remember so vividly that the cadaver disturbed me.

For the life of you, I couldn’t tell you why. It looked about the same as any other I’d bring in. But it seemed so… wrong, somehow. And although I checked it over, and the coroner, and basically anyone who had the authority to move the body checked it over – despite all that, I was sure that it was diseased somehow. It wasn’t, of course. They wouldn’t let a group of students dissect a body riddled with bacteria and pus and viruses, that would be a massive biohazard. But despite the fact that he was thoroughly washed and shaved and sanitized, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, he was dirty.

That whole session, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And, as strange as it sounds, I think the feeling must have been mutual. We were covering cranial anatomy at that point. Whenever the students would lift the cadaver’s eyelids… well, it sounds silly to admit, but he looked like he was looking at me. No matter where I was in the lab. I remember his eyes very distinctly. They were a pale, watery blue. For a moment, I thought that he must have had cataracts, but no – I think his eyes were just that light.

And then, by the end of class, it was over. Just another body. I cleaned up the mess, got it prepped, and some people came to take it away for cremation.

Now, I understand that nothing out of the ordinary happened there. I know that your institution needs more to go off of than “I felt weird around a dead body”.

The real trouble started when the cadaver came to my apartment.

I have no real proof it was him, but… I _know_ it was. I’d been having trouble with my bathroom sink for a while, and my landlord wasn’t really doing anything about it, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. There was a business card that I’d found rifling through a junk drawer, looking for a wrench or something so maybe I could fix it myself.

The card was yellowed and creased, and looked like it had been there for ages. It read simply, “Plumber - Low rates”, and then the business’ number. On a lark, I called it, and, to my surprise, someone picked up. He spoke in a low, quiet, rumble of a Sussex accent. He said he’d be right over – same day service.

Sure enough, he was at the apartment complex in under an hour. I rang him up, and… there he was. I was sure of it. He had those same watery blue eyes. I’d recognize them anywhere. Except now, he was unshaved, with a full five-o-clock-shadow, and a full head of wild, dark hair. And this time, I was _positive_ he was diseased. You could smell it on him. He stunk like a bad head cold, and his skin had an oily, filthy sheen, underneath which was grey and sallow flesh.

But, I tried to shake it off as an odd coincidence. He went to work in the bathroom. He was in there for the better part of an hour, working silently. I don’t think a single word was said between us that whole time. Then, when he was done, he silently packed up his tools, and left.

As I approached him to ask about payment, he stumbled a bit, and his toolbox – all twenty-five kilos or so of it – came crashing down upon my foot. To this day, I don’t know why it was as painful as it was. I’ve had worse injuries, and the worst among them hadn’t hurt a fraction as much. I nearly fell to my knees. And as I stood there, tears welling in my eyes and curses pouring from my mouth, the plumber just picked his toolbox up and headed for the door. He turned around and said, “Call it even, yeah?”. He smiled at me. I’ll never forget that – he had the audacity to _smile_ at me. Then he left.

I wasn’t ready to call it even. I was certain he’d broken my foot. I was ready to hit him with a lawsuit. But time passed, and the pain subsided.

Except for in my big toe.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The pain throbbed through it with such intensity that I was just about to call an ambulance to take me to the emergency room. I suppose the whole ordeal must have exhausted me, though, because before I knew it, I was asleep and dreaming.

I dreamt not of tangible objects or situations, but more abstract concepts. _Pain. Fast. Sharp. Foul_. Just those four, over and over. Eight hours passed, and my alarm clock woke me.

The pain had subsided, but not by much. Taking a look at my foot, there didn’t appear to be any bruising, but the outer side of my big toe was red and swollen. It hurt to the touch. Nothing else did, though, so I took it as a sign that nothing was broken.

As I got ready for work, it quickly became apparent I would have to call off. I was in no condition to be on my feet all day. I called up a podiatrist to see if I could get an appointment, and, as luck would have it, they had one later that afternoon. I showed up. The doctor was very nice. She said I had an ingrown toenail, which I thought was odd, but accepted. She cut it out, which was unpleasant, but manageable. She said there was an infection, and that it looked “quite unpleasant”, but she didn’t elaborate beyond that. She told me she’d send an antibacterial cream for the wound to the pharmacist, and that was it. That _should_ have been it. That should’ve been the end of it.

An ingrown toenail can be caused by physical trauma, yes. I had it happen on the other foot a few years before this – I was working at a Tesco, and I slammed my thumb in a freezer door. It took a few days for the damage to become apparent. So, in hindsight, I should have noticed how strange it was that in less than twelve hours, I had developed not only an ingrown toenail but “the largest one she’d seen in years”, but I didn’t. I guess I was too shaken up about the plumber who looked like the cadaver.

Speaking of, when I got home, I noticed that he hadn’t _actually_ fixed my faucet. I went to wash my hands, and when I turned it on, it just emitted this low rumble. It was dry as a bone. I would have called back to complain, but… well, you know. I wasn’t in any mood to see that man again.

That night, I had those same abstract dreams. _Pain. Fast. Sharp. Foul. Pain. Fast. Sharp. Foul._ Except now, there were visuals. Pain – blood flowing. Fast – the snapping of jaws. Sharp – the flash of a blade. Foul – some wretched black fluid.

I woke up in a sweat. I sat there in bed for a few minutes, trying to gather myself. The dream hadn’t been that frightening, I don’t know why it affected me so much. But in the moment, I felt like it was the worst nightmare I’d ever had.

I got up to use the bathroom, which I’d noticed immediately was a mistake. The second I put pressure on my foot, that same pain flowed through my leg like a lightning bolt. I swore a bit, and sat back down. Thankfully, the cream he’d given me was just on the nightstand.

As I went to apply it, I noticed something strange. I still had the wound from the surgery – you could still see where she’d cut away at the side of my toe to get the nail – but the nail was grown fully back. She’d cut about a quarter of it off just the day before. And yet, there it was, as if nothing had happened.

Experimentally, I went to touch it. It was real – of course it was. And gently, tenderly, I went to touch the side of my toe she’d operated on. It still hurt, but it wasn’t the pain of surgery. It was still red, still swollen.

And digging into it was the nail.

I considered calling the podiatrist back, but I couldn’t think of what to say. Surely, they’d think I was trying to pull some weird prank on them. So, instead, I made the unwise decision to do a bit of self-surgery. I pulled up a video on YouTube, and it had seemed simple enough. Just pull back the paronychium, maybe use a cuticle pusher or something to get to the nail, and cut out the offending part with a little pair of scissors. Simple.

I took a few deep breaths. I’d sterilized everything to the best of my ability – though, to my chagrin, the sink still wasn’t working – and I was ready to get down to business.

The second I pulled the area around my nail back, two things happened. One, that now-familiar pain shot through not only my leg, but now up my side to my arm.

And two, a thick, black pus shot out from where the skin met the nail.

It was about the consistency of oil, and was black as tar. It had little chunks of… _something_ in it, something white, and the consistency of damp bread. And the smell of it… God, if I never have to smell it again, it’ll be too soon. The vomit rose in my throat, and though I’m not especially proud to admit it, I got sick all over my bed.

That was my breaking point. I called 999 and requested an ambulance. I said I was worried about my toe becoming gangrenous or necrotic or I-don’t-even-know-what. I just knew I needed to see a professional about this.

The rest of that day was a blur to me. I was in such pain, I don’t think I was thinking straight. The fact that they had me on a morphine drip didn’t help either. I remember they took a sample of the pus and sent it to the lab. I also remember the doctor who saw me talked about “a chemical matrixechtomy” – basically, they were going to remove not only the ingrown nail, but the nail as a whole, and then use some sort of chemical solution to keep it growing back. I remember I made a joke about “getting declawed”, but I don’t think it got a positive reaction.

You know, it’s funny – it was a very serious procedure. The doctor was very dire, I remember that. But for the life of me, I don’t recall why. I know that my situation wasn’t normal, and it was certainly gross, but he seemed so concerned for me. Maybe he was just empathetic, I think there was something else going on I wasn’t picking up on. Through the pain and the painkillers, I couldn’t make sense of the situation.

Either way, they did the procedure. I’ll spare you the details. You can google a video on what a chemical matrixechtomy looks like, but seriously, **don’t** do it unless you have a very, very strong stomach. I sat there for a while, stewing in agony, but at least it was a different agony than the one I’d been going through. They showed me the nail. It was L-shaped. They said it was grown a centimeter and a half into my toe. I didn’t really care. I just wanted to go home and be at peace.

They said they were still looking at my pus sample, but it looked like a viral infection rather than a bacterial one; so, they could offer stuff to cure the symptoms, but not the infection itself. I said that was fine. I took a cab home, because God knows I wasn’t walking from the hospital to there.

It was already getting dark by the time I got home. Lamely, I limped to my bedroom and collapsed on my bed. I don’t know how long I laid there miserably until I passed out.

_Pain. Fast. Sharp. Foul._

_Pain. Fast. Sharp. Foul._

_Pain. Fast. Sharp. Foul._

I woke up screaming – not from the nightmare, though.

My entire leg, from the top of my thigh to the bottom of my sole, was in excruciating pain. For a moment, I just laid there, too overcome with agony to even scream. In a mad scramble, I tried to reach for the lamp, or my phone, because now the pain was _different_. Before, it was just… you know, it hurt the was an ingrown nail hurt. Hot, sharp, worse with pressure, all that. But this was far, far worse. Like I was being stabbed, like I was being prodded with a fireplace poker.

I made a mad scramble to turn on a light. I didn’t even bother trying to get out of bed. Just rolling over, my leg felt like it was being burnt by the deepest hellfire. With the utmost effort, I reached for the lamp on my nightstand, and turned it on.

Some nights, I wish I had left the light off. I wonder if maybe to die in ignorance would be more of a blessing than to live on with the burden of knowing.

For a moment, I thought that there was something living on my leg. By the way it was wrapped around me, I thought that maybe it was a snake, or a cobra, or something. But then, I realized that it couldn’t be that. It was too thin.

Too narrow.

Too flat.

Too cold.

Too hard.

My eyes were drawn to my big toe, where the nail sprouted out in all directions. It took a moment for me to process, but I realized that not only had it grown forward, but straight through the sides of my toe – both sides – and through the bottom, as well. The protrusions were horribly long, each one going a separate direction. One was wrapped around my leg. One was binding the rest of my toes together. The other two I could feel weaved in and out of my flesh, like some horrendous worm burrowing in the soil. And coating them all over – especially where they entered and exited my leg – was a thin sheen of that vile, wretched black pus.

All at once, I felt this horrible… sensation. I still don’t know how to pull it into words. Imagine a dentist pulling your tooth out, but stretched out indefinitely. And through the pain, I felt the nails _move_. The grip on my leg became tighter. The vice-like pressure on my toes became greater. And every night, in my dreams, I still hear the noise a nail makes as it rubs against your femur.

I threw myself out of bed. I knew it would be useless to try to walk, so I limply flopped onto the floor, and began to drag myself across the room. My first thought was to get the kettle on, and try to boil whatever was trying to kill me to death. I knew it would damage my leg in the process. I didn’t care. No pain could be greater than what I felt in that moment.

Like my lamp, I kept my kettle on my night stand. I reached up for it, and after a moment, my hand found it. Then, it was a matter of dragging myself into the bathroom.

The nails still twisting and boring through my flesh, I managed to at least get up on my knees in the bathroom to use the sink. I felt one of the nails snap within me. I realized after a moment that all that did was give the nail a new, sharper edge as it made its horrendous journey through me.

I grabbed the faucet and turned it on full blast. There was nothing for a moment, and then, like a dam bursting, it all came out at once. But it wasn’t water coming from the sink, no. It was the same putrid fluid that was leaking from my toe.

For a moment, I felt defeated, and was sure that I was going to die. The longest of the nails had made it to the top of my thigh, and was beginning to work its way into my torso. Then, right next to the sink, I caught sight of my shaving kit. I grabbed my razor and collapsed back on the floor. I smashed it on the ground, trying to free a blade.

I don’t think I need to go into too much detail on what I ended up doing.

I know you noticed my prosthetic foot when I walked in.

I don’t know when, but at a certain point, the nails had stopped, and I had gotten my breath back. I kept cutting away. I didn’t want to take any chance that that thing was still alive. I began to scream, and as the blood poured out of me, the world began to grow dark.

I woke up in a hospital the following day. My neighbor had heard me screaming, and called 999. They told me that they couldn’t save the foot. I remember that they seemed confused when I did not react.

I don’t think it’s fair, honestly. I don’t understand why it happened to _me_. What crime did I commit? What was my transgression? That I called the wrong plumber?

I don’t understand.

I try not to think about it, but it’s hard, you know? It’s not exactly easy to forget when I have to see the scars every time I take off my pants. Some nights, I swear they’re blacker than other scars, but I’m sure that’s just paranoia.

My sink is working again. Whoever showed up must have… I don’t know, cleaned it up? Either way, the water is as clear as anything else now. But still, I can’t help but eschew it to use the showerhead instead, sometimes.

I’m still working in lab tech – in Oxford, now. It’s a nice job. As much as I miss Dr. McGregor, I don’t think I have it in me to go back to King’s.

Life hasn’t been that bad. I’ve long since gotten used to the prosthetic – it’s not a bad thing, you know. For one, I know it can never get an ingrown toenail.

~~~

Statement… statement ends.

Well, I… good Lord.

Moving past the general unpleasantness of the whole ordeal, we’ve done our best to look into this. Tim was right. We asked around about the Anatomy Theater in King’s, and wouldn’t you know it, somebody working in the anatomy department had already given us a statement.

Speaking of Tim, he managed to snag us some police records about Erastus’… _incident_. It was filed as “self-mutilation”, which I cannot deny. The police report indicated that the bathroom floor was “littered with toenail clippings, looking to be approximately over a decade’s worth”. I suppose the idea that it was a night’s worth would be too much for them to handle. Other than that, there is a single line towards the bottom – “biomass found in sink”. I wonder how much is being hidden in those four little words?

On that note, Sasha got us all of Erastus’ medical records regarding the incident. The second hospital visit – post-amputation –is unremarkable, save for the “unknown wounds on the patient’s right leg.” The podiatrist visit is even duller. However, after doing a bit of digging and hacking into a few servers, we found something quite interesting indeed regarding Mr. Constantinou’s _first_ hospital visit.

The pus was, as they said, from a viral infection. But, what they neglected to mention is that the virus that they found in particular and _oncovirus_ – one that can cause cancer. There was debate over what it was exactly, with guesses ranging from hepatitis to HPV. However, shockingly, it turned out to be “nearly identical” to a viral agent usually associated with canine transmissible venereal tumors, one of only three known contagious cancers in mammals. Anything after this is under tight lock and key.

Which brings me to the plumber, who I think can be safely assumed to be none other than our good friend John Amherst. Yes, he supposedly died a while back, but, well… that’s never stopped him before, has it? We’ve seen his gruesome handiwork at Ivy Meadows before, and while my stomach turns at the thought of him trying to make Erastus some sort of patient zero for a viral cancer, I honestly don’t think I could put it past him. I suppose the good news is, if his plan _did_ work, we’d have heard of it by now.

Martin went to talk to Erastus to see if he had anything more to say. He did not, and was apparently _very_ blunt in letting Martin know as much. They didn’t want to say more on the matter, so I assume the reaction was negative, to say the least.

Finally, I did a bit of digging around myself. While this statement is certainly interesting, we can’t get distracted from the main focus of the faculty of King’s College. And what I found about Dr. McGregor is… unnerving, to say the least. He died in 2012, about nine or ten days after Erastus was committed into the hospital. I couldn’t get any clear answers on the cause of death beyond “untreated podiatric issues”. He was cremated. I suppose that’s fair. If they found his body in the condition I’m thinking of, I imagine they wouldn’t want an open casket funeral for him.

Recording ends.


End file.
